Brothel-Ownership Law Ruled Unconstitutional

(CN) – Residency requirements that blocked a Dallas businessman from buying the famous Chicken Ranch brothel in Pahrump, Nev., are unconstitutional, a Nevada Supreme Court Judge ruled.
Bruce Kahn’s TCR Holdings filed a federal lawsuit in March 2009, accusing Nye County officials of unfairly denying his application to run a bordello based on an illegal ordinance that the application include proof that he has lived in Nevada for the past six months. Although U.S. District Judge James Mahan’s brief ruling found that the ordinance violates the “dormant Commerce Clause” of the Constitution, his ruling doesn’t affect the county’s ordinance requiring licensees to run the brothels from Nevada. TCR claimed in its lawsuit that it put down $150,000 to buy the Chicken Ranch, but lost his investment when his application to run the brothel was denied in 2007 because he lived out of state.